DudeNeedaEaseOnUp

So I cooked up some chicken using this recipe, and it was freaking good. It calls for a million spices/seasoning and a lot of garlic. I thought it’d be too much so I didn’t add as much as it said, and when I ate it I realized it coulda used all that seasoning after all! You may not want to scroll through these pictures if you’re an extreme vegetarian/vegan/animal rights activist, because that’s some hxc dead chicken:

School is over for me and I realize I literally have nothing to do. Nothing. To do. Not one thing. Actually, there are things I can do, but they all involve my computer/the internet. I’ll go “I think I’m done with the internet. Now what can I do…Oh! I can edit pictures!…on my computer. I can work on my webcomic!…on my computer. I can finish the vlogcandy website!…on my computer.” Sometimes I just don’t want to be on a computer all day. I think I may need to get a job, both for California money and also to save my sanity.

Oh and yes! Vlogcandy is going to California! We’re going to have a big fat VlogCandy gathering sometime while we’re there, which we need to plan for! We wanna do some fun interactive stuff (instead of just standing around in a circle).

Much like the Toronto trip, we thought this trip wasn’t going to happen/Andrew wasn’t coming about 5 or 6 times before tickets were booked. The original plan was to fly into Oregon first and road trip down to CA, but it would’ve taken too much time and just wasn’t working out I’m okay with that as long as Zack brings a big box of whiffies pies to California with him (since I won’t be there to buy them myself). I don’t care if they’re cold. I don’t care if they’re stale. I don’t care if they’re crushed. I don’t care if Zack has to chew them up for me and spit them into my mouth like a mother penguin. I want. Those pies.

We’ll be flying in on July 18th and flying out on the 26th. We were almost going to go to Vidcon, but the dates just weren’t working with our schedules. Meghan will be there though! I’ll give you dudes more deetz when we figure ‘em out.

Lastly, I will be selling some prints soon Keep an eye out for that

Screenprinting

I thought I’d bring my camera to my screenprinting class and take some pictures. I find the process really interesting and always wondered how it was done. Now that I know how it works, I’m gonna tell you how to do it! …Whether you wanna know or not!

Screenprinting is a process of pressing ink through a screen to produce an image. You can print any design you want onto almost any kind of surface, and it’s commonly used to print designs on t-shirts. Picture time! You can either read the description under each thumbnail, or click on one of the pictures and press the arrow on the right of each one to look through them (the description will also be underneath each picture in this gallery view).

: First step is to take your screen (which you'll see in the following pictures) and coat it with a light-sensitive photo emulsion. It kinda looks like a red or green goop that you coat the inside of your screen with. The photo emulsion hardens when exposed to light, and this is our giant lightbox!

: Here's my screen on the light box. I've placed a black drawing on clear plastic underneath it. When the screen is exposed to light, the black ink will block the light out. This will allow all of the photo emulsion to harden, except the places where it's blocked out by my design. You'll see!

: The lid is placed down on the screen, and the timer set to 2 and a half minutes of light exposure. There's also a giant vacuum inside the light box to keep it suctioned down to the glass. After 2 and a half minutes the light box is turned off, and the screen quickly brought into the wash room.

: Here's my screen in the wash room. You can faintly see my design burned on it.

: The places on my screen -not- exposed to light wash out easily with water, and the rest of it stays. This allows ink to pass through -only- the places -without- hardened photo emulsion.

: Here's the print I'm working on before I put this new design on top of it. Each color is its own separate design, the black printed first and a transparent blue ink printed right on top of it.

: The screen is secured to the table with the clamps on the left (usually the clamps are put at the top of the screen, but I was running out of table space). I line the print up underneath it so my design matches up perfectly, and then use tabs with double-sided tape to mark where the print is on the table. This allows me to take my other prints and push them into the space I make with the tabs, that way all of my prints will be registered exactly where the first one was and will automatically line up with my screen.

: Here you can see what's being printed. Since ink will not pass through the hardened emulsion, I won't be printing anything in the eyes, teeth, or around the body. I'll be filling in the white of the face, and printing pink on top of the blue mouth and horns.

: The ink is put across the top of the screen. I then take a squeegee, press down, and swipe the ink down across the screen in one fluid motion

: My ink was actually way too red and I had to re-mix it. You'll see what it looked like before I fixed the ink in a few pictures

: And this is the result! The ink colored in the face, made the horns and mouth a slightly different color blue than the blue that was already there, and I also printed the pink doodles into the thought bubble.

: I printed about 10 of these but only 7 of them came out alright

: Here's what the print looked like before I re-mixed my ink. My professor described him as looking like he was choking on something

And that’s basically how it works! I’m extremely happy with the way this print came out and I’m trying to keep a monster theme with my other ones. I’m currently working on some kinda bigfoot abominable snowman type thing. I’ll show pictures when I get it printed. Let me know what you think about this one and if my description made sense to you! If it didn’t and you’re interested feel free to ask questions

Portland

So, my trip to Portland was awesome. I’m really glad it was my first flight ever and my first trip by myself. I’m happy that I did it because I absolutely needed to. I really was taught a lesson about being independent and proved to myself that I don’t always need someone to guide me through everything! I’d be ready to hop on a plane tomorrow to go just about anywhere.

But before that, here’s some pictures from the trip! Me and Zack didn’t really do any touristy stuff (he’s saving that for when the entire kandy krew visits), it was mostly just a long hangout. The pictures are in chronological order but I forget where each day starts and ends, so use your imagination!

: First time I met Maya (Zack's niece) she kept looking at me like I was an alien. At one point she started going "Ooooooooooh!!!" like she was going to cry and I thought I was scaring her; turns out she just likes making this face.

: This is the outside of Fubonn, an asian market where me and Zack bought a buncha asian junk food and sodas

: Here's the inside! I couldn't take many pictures because a security guard told me I wasn't allowed to

: I was able to take pictures inside of a small bakery in there though. This is the start of MANY food-related pictures

: I thought the patterns on the sides were airbrushed onto the cakes; turns out they're just plastic >:O

: We went to Powells which is a bookstore specific to Oregon (I think). It's like a big Barnes and Noble, and each section of books is color-coded.

: They have busses (or trolleys, I'm not sure what this is) that go all over portland, and you can ride them for FREE. Free public transit is completely mind boggling to me.

: We stopped by a bakery where Zack got one of these lemon macarons

: He also got another thing but I have no idea what it is. I just thought it looked purty.

: We went to a Vegan italian place called Portobello. Forgot to mention, almost every single place we went to was Vegan, mostly so I wouldn't get sick (no dairy), but also because the food is delicious and every other place that serves food in Portland also has a vegan menu.

: I got the ravioli and the "steak" (vegan, of course, so it's not real steak) and mashed potatos.

: I couldn't believe that it was the most delicious ravioli I've ever eaten.

: Here's what fake steak looks like! Not too far from the real thing. I even like the vegetables in between

: Zack's friend Cherie who ate at portobello with us

: We stopped by a vegan grocery store one day and this was painted on the wall. I didn't even realize what it was until after I took the picture: vegetable people threatening mcdonald's characters

: After the vegan grocery store we went to a vegan bakery called Sweet Pea. I got this enormous cinnamon roll and some kind of "roast beef" sandwich with a "meat" dippin sauce

: Zack got uh...whatever this is called. Chocolate, peanut butter, and some kinda granola on the bottom. I took a bite of it and again I was completely blown away. The day before I had eaten the best ravioli I had ever tasted, and now I was eating the best peanut butter I had ever tasted.

: This picture isn't important, I just wanted to show everyone that Zack is 2 kool 4 skool.

: We went to an asian knick-knack store called "Cargo" (apparently. Cargo wasn't written anywhere on the outside of the store) and these were the decorations hanging above it

: Same day as Cargo, we planned on going to a classic video game arcade, but when we got there it turned out they started serving alcohol at 5 PM (isn't that freaking early?) and I couldn't go in because I'm not 21. I was REALLY sad, until we went to another place Zack had been to called Wunderland Arcade, which was probably 10x better than the classic video arcade woulda been. This game was the only classic arcade game in there, and we both sucked at it.

: Zack somehow hit a jackpot TWICE on two different games

: He let me keep the majority of the tickets and I got an inflatable batman with them :D He got a super SICK skull bracelet

: And here is my favorite place ever in Portland: Whiffies Fried Pies. I don't even usually like pie, but these were DELICIOUS. I bought a t-shirt from them and everything. The first one I got was peanut butter cream flavored, and the second was blueberry. I was expecting the blueberry one to be sickly sweet like the inside of a blueberry poptart, but it ended up being the PERFECT amount of tart and sugar. SO GOOD.

: Last day of the trip we went to Hot Lips Pizza. I spent most of the day being morbidly depressed because I knew I had to go home that night. Inside Hot Lips me and Zack were talking, and he made me realize that the next time we'd be hanging out was only 3 months away! The rest of the day became tolerable after that.

: I got this deliiiicious meat sandwich with pesto. Best pesto anything I've ever tasted. Somehow, every single thing I ate in portland was the best ____ I've ever had.

: The last thing we did before I left was go to Voodoo Doughnuts where I got a big box of doughnuts to bring home on the plane. Zack unfortunately had class from 6PM-9:45 so I had to sit and read in Powells until he got out. It wasn't so bad! After that we drove to the airport, and I was completely shocked by how friendly the people in the airport were. I think I'm getting tired of the rude/snotty/stuck-up people who plague NYC. We hugged, high-fived, and I headed to the plane. Worst 4 and a half hours of my life. There's nothing exciting about going home, ever. I was able to relax the second half of my flight and read some scott pilgrim though. This picture is of the monitor on the back of every jet-blue seat. It plays direct TV and has a channel that shows your current location, speed, and altitude! Super cool.

: I loved the packaging of this Snooze Kit.

: The donuts mostly made it!

: I think my fave, aside from the apple fritter (which was the size of my face) was the crunchberries donut.

The day I got home and the day after I felt a little lost. I went from living in a house where I’d see one of my best friends every single day, where there was always something going on, to coming home to a place where I’m mostly to myself. The difference between this trip and my past ones is that in my past trips, I had someone to share that feeling with me. It took a little adjusting, but eventually everything felt back to normal.

What I talked about here are really just SOME of the things that happened. There are plenty of in-betweens I wish I didn’t forget, but I know I already have. We started compiling a list near the end of the trip:
-Drove past a fight between a white dude in a suit and a little black kid
-Watched Dragonball: Evolution, which we both actually ENJOYED, possibly because we only expected it to be horrible.
-Drove into oncoming traffic twice somehow. Luckily the traffic in portland is much slower than in NYC and we were able to whip around a corner before any cars drove at us. Zack yelled a bunch of vulgarities both of these times, which I really really really enjoy. For some reason I find it so funny to hear him curse.
-Ate a lot of pizza rolls and drank a lot of Brand-X vitamin water
-Downloaded and sang the entire Pokemon 2-B-A Master soundtrack while driving somewhere. Zack harmonized when we sang the pokemon themesong.
-Beat Megaman 2!

And like I said, plenty of stuff I’m forgetting. The point is this trip was awesome, and now I can’t WAIT until the kandy krew’s trip to California this summer. It’s nice having friends who absolutely without a doubt feel like family to me. I’m gonna give them all kisses on the mouth the next time I see them (even AUBREY, if I get my cootie shot first).

VlogcandyPlus

Hay! Been a while!

I wanna say that’s because I haven’t been doing so much artwork recently, however that’s mostly because me and Zack have been working on a VlogCandy interactive adventure video for a week STRAIGHT, and it is finally up:

I have never worked so hard on something in such a short amount of time. Just a week ago this was nothing but an idea, without a fleshed-out storyline and barely any direction. All we knew was that Lopie was going to disappear, and that was it. In just one week we created a story, got a bunch of guests to be involved (12, to be exact), created multiple paths for each video, artwork, animations, found or created music, edited uploaded and annotated everything. It’s really the only thing I was focused on. Nothing else but this video mattered. Every hour that I was awake was spent editing or animating and that’s not even an exaggeration.

Thank the gourd for Zack, because without him this never would’ve happened, as much as I told myself it would’ve before I knew he was going to be involved. I knew how busy everyone in VlogCandy was and I literally said “Um. I’m making this interactive video. Hope you guys don’t mind” without any expectations from anyone else, but Zack jumped in and created all of the artwork you see in the videos. And despite having to draw maybe 25 or more drawings, the quality of his work was consistent throughout the entire process.

We were an awesome team and I’m SO proud of how the video turned out. If VlogCandy somehow had to stop making videos tomorrow, I wouldn’t mind as much knowing this was the last thing we produced. All of this just proved that I’d love to do stuff like this for a living. Not the whole video/edting aspect, but the art and creativity that went into this. I worked a full-time job for this video and it was totally worth it.

So! I hope you dudes like it There are a whole buncha guests you’ll probably like seeing and a lot of throwbacks to past VlogCandy stuff. Let me know what you think!

Monster+

I bought 170 dollars worth of art supplies today.

I don’t know if this monster is covering his you-know-what or what he’s doing. Maybe he’s naked. Oh, I guess the heart suggests he’s also in love. So like…maybe he loves being naked.

I’ve decided that my theme for my screenprinting class is going to be monsters (inspired by miss Kakeda, of course). Actually…I feel like a lot of what I do in the near future is going to be monsters. I dunno, I guess I just got super inspired. I’d still like to work on my rendering and drawing the human figure too though.

Iiii don’t really have much else to say! OH! Actually, I should say that I’m selling one of the paintings I posted recently on ebay! Check it out!

Lastly, I’ve become obsessed with this webcomic recently; Nedroid.com. Freaking…love it. I leave you with a few of my faves:

Hero+

Based on Zack’s drawing of the Kandy Krew as superheroes:

I love us as superheroes so freaking much. And the powers, as described in Zack’s recent vlogcandy video; Aubrey- Controls the weather, Andrew- Super stretchy, Me- Invisibility, Zack- Super Strength, Meghan- Healing and light magic abilities. I WISH THIS WERE REAL.

Now that I started school again, you’re going to see a lot more artwork. My classes are Digital Photography, Illustration, Animation, Digital video, and Printmaking. How awesome does all of that sound? I’ve only gone to my Digital Photography and Illustration class so far, so I hope the other three are just as exciting. Unfortunately although my Digital Photo professor has a plethora of knowledge to bestow upon us, most of my class uses point-and-shoot cameras. This means he’s going to be teaching them how to use SD cards when he could be teaching us about a billion other things. I think I’m gonna try to be friends with this guy. I could learn a whole lot from him.

I leave you with some artwork I’ve seen recently that I freaking love. My current favorite artist is Aya Kakeda. I saw something by her in my illustration class, and when I looked her up, surprise!; she’s totally in the whole urban toy scene which I am very familiar with. I’ve definitely seen her artwork, I just didn’t know who she was! Here’s some faves:

Also found out about Tim Biskup (also in the urban toy scene) and Sam Weber:

That is all!

The White Rabbit

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been working on this for my printmaking class but I haven’t really posted it anywhere. The assignment is to make a print that covers 3 blocks, with a head on the top, torso in the middle, and legs on the bottom, separated so that they can be switched around with other peoples’ blocks and make a sort of Exquisite Corpse. Here it is from start to where I am now:

First I drew him out the same size as each block

Then I traced the drawing onto tracing paper (not shown here), flipped that over, and traced it AGAIN onto transfer paper on top of my 3 blocks (the blue is the transfer drawing)

Carved out the head, and then the body. I made a lot of mistake here as the wood splinters really easily, but just had to work around each mistake

And this is what I have so far. The arms are kinda short and the legs are kinda long, but I think once I carve in the hands and the feet it’ll look a bit better. I need 4 prints and I only have 2 classes left. I think if I finish the carving today I’ll be able to do all of it on time

The Forest Weetch+

Really happy with my VC video this week

Things are coming together for winter plans and college and stuff. A lot of decisions will be made this month. I wouldn’t want to miss these next two months entirely, however I know that there’s going to be and has been a lot of filler. Wouldn’t mind hopping around to the days where it’s actually worth going to class or something kewl happens. So I guess I’m saying that I’m just really excited for December, aaand not so excited for anything up until then.

Except Halloween! I don’t think I’ve talked about it anywhere yet, but me and Aubrey are going for the second year in a row as main character girl + anthropomorphic side character. Aubrey’s going to be Alice and I’m going to be the White Rabbit We ordered wigs and bought the purrrfect clothing for our costumes, now all I need to do is make my ears and Aubrey needs to tailor her dress a bit.

IT’S FUNNA ROCK!

Wooden+

Ready To Go!

What do you guys think of this squid I drew? I've been inspired by mr. binks and now I really want to get into drawing again. Classes started on friday for me (weird day) and I’m taking all art classes, so I’m going to get a couple sketchbooks whenever I buy my supplies. I have two self-portraits to paint by next friday x_x.

My friday class re-ignited my “GTFO of my current college and go to SVA” fire. A few weeks ago I opened up a bank account at Chase, and it turns out I ACTUALLY HAVE CREDIT. GOOD credit, even. Good enough that I was pre-approved for a credit card and a freaking home equity loan. I had a credit card under my dad’s bank account, and apparently I built credit off of that without even realizing it. So I might actually be able to take out a loan to go to SVA.

For a while I thought maybe I didn’t need to go to a big art school to be successful in photography. It’s true, except then I feel like I’d be putting my future career in the hands of LUCK. However likely my chances are, I am absolutely miserable at the college I’m at right now and I’m ready to go! So we’ll see how it goes this time

I’ve also realized that I’m kind of sick of where I am right now. I love New York City, but I’m ready to see more places. I’m ready to take a plane (never have) and go wherever. Specifically, though, I want to go to a place with more nature. I want to know what it’s like to walk through the woods. I want to know what it’s like to go camping. I want to know what it’s like to live in a place that isn’t so congested with people.

And I may hate it. I may absolutely freaking hate it. But I just want to find out. Maybe there are other places meant for me, but I’ll never know if I don’t see them.

On the subject of traveling and the future and stuff, I also really want to live with the Kandy Krew in the future. I’m not sure how far in the future that may be, but I know that whenever I move out I want the Krew as my roommates. That sounds kind of insane, but the idea is becoming more and more plausible the more I think about it and the more we talk about it. The end of my last entry had a buncha weirdo house things in it because I’ve been looking at a lot of interior design lately. I’m 100% sure that when we all live together we are going to have the coolest house EVER.

I guess my main point is that I’m just ready to see the world (with my friends), and I’m ready to go now The next VC hangout will be in december/january, so all I have to do is ENDURE these next few months of my terrible college until my dweamz start coming true *o*. If things go according to plan, it’ll be Horrible College > VC in Canada > SVA in January > Maybe visiting Zack for Spring Break > VC summer hangout. I’m excited